Adding to Advertisements

What you’ll need

Magazines or newspapers, beads, gems, paint, glitter, glue

Ellen Gallagher uses old advertisements for things that people wear or put on their bodies, such as stockings, wigs, and other cosmetics products, and changes them by adding other materials to the original advertisement.

Find a paperadvertisement in a magazine or newspaper, or print one out from online, that shows the head and/or body of a person.

Decide how you’d like to change that person’s appearance. Will you change their hair, eyes, face, body or mouth? How?

Think about what materials you could use. Gallagher uses beads, gems, paint, glitter, and other small items to change the original advertisements she uses.

You can draw, glue, or sculpt different materials onto your original image. Consider coloring over, erasing, or building out parts of your image to make them 3D.